University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review
Volume 38 | Issue 3
Article 5
2016
Constitutional Law—Fourth Amendment and
Seizures— Accidental Seizures by Deadly Force:
Who is Seized During a Police Shootout? Plumhoff
V. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012 (2014).
Adam D. Franks
Follow this and additional works at: http://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview
Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Fourteenth Amendment Commons, and the Fourth
Amendment Commons
Recommended Citation
Adam D. Franks, Constitutional Law—Fourth Amendment and Seizures— Accidental Seizures by Deadly Force: Who is Seized During a
Police Shootout? Plumhoff V. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012 (2014)., 38 U. Ark. Little Rock L. Rev. 493 (2016).
Available at: http://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview/vol38/iss3/5
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CONSTITUTIONAL LAW—FOURTH AMENDMENT AND SEIZURES—
ACCIDENTAL SEIZURES BY DEADLY FORCE: WHO IS SEIZED DURING A
POLICE SHOOTOUT? PLUMHOFF V. RICKARD, 134 S. CT. 2012 (2014).
I. INTRODUCTION
[Donald] Rickard, 44, and his live-in girlfriend, Kelly Allen, 44, died July 18[, 2004,] after West Memphis police chased them into Memphis and
shot into their car.
...
Police found them dead after their car slammed into a North Memphis
house. Either the gunshots or the crash could have killed them, the medcal examiner says.
...
Even if Rickard did ram one of their cruisers when cornered . . . as West
Memphis police contend, were officers justified in shooting, especially
with another person in the car?1
This decade-old newspaper account describes an unfortunately familiar
type of police-citizen encounter and raises a question that continues more
than ten years later to challenge courts across the country. Between 2005
and 2012, police officers in the United States were responsible for an average of 400 fatal shootings per year.2 In light of the need to subject police
conduct to constitutional scrutiny,3 the judiciary plays an important role in
probing police shootings, deterring misconduct, and incentivizing reforms
necessary to reduce unconstitutional conduct.4 However, federal courts’
excessive force and seizure decisions have not yielded clear, bright-line
mandates for law enforcement officers.5
1. Chris Conley, 2 Dead, Police Probe Asks Why, MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL, July
25, 2004, at B1.
2. Kevin Johnson et al., Local Police Involved in 400 Killings Per Year, USA TODAY
(August 15, 2014, 9:41 AM), http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/policekillings-data/14060357/.
3. Kathryn R. Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings As Fourth Amendment Seizures, 20
HASTINGS CONST. L.Q. 337, 380 (1992) [hereinafter Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings].
4. Rachel Harmon, Limited Leverage: Federal Remedies and Policing Reform, 32 ST.
LOUIS U. PUB. L. REV. 33, 34 (2012). Justice Robert H. Jackson explained that “the right to be
secure against searches and seizures is one of the most difficult to protect. Since [police]
officers are themselves the chief invaders, there is no enforcement outside of court.” Brinegar
v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 181 (1949) (Jackson, J., dissenting).
5. Tracey Maclin, The Central Meaning of the Fourth Amendment, 35 WM. & MARY L.
REV. 197, 198 (1993) (“The entity primarily responsible for educating the public and the
493
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Cases that arise when police officers cause injuries to bystanders and
passengers during high-speed chases engender a unique breed of claim that
lives somewhere on the hazy frontier between the constitutional prohibition
of unreasonable seizure and the guarantee of substantive due process.6 The
Supreme Court of the United States has held that police officers’ use of
deadly force to apprehend a criminal suspect triggers the protections of the
Fourth Amendment,7 but accidental applications of police force do not fall
neatly into this category of Fourth Amendment decisions.8 The Civil Rights
Act of 1871—codified as 42 U.S.C. § 1983—and its state corollaries provide means of redress for the deprivation of constitutional rights,9 and most
section 1983 lawsuits are excessive-force claims brought against state and
local government officials.10 But whether an innocent person injured or
killed by police force can recover on a Fourth Amendment claim brought
under section 198311 is a closer question that often turns on where the incident took place.12 Indeed, the Supreme Court recently recognized that
“[t]here seems to be some disagreement among lower courts as to whether
[a vehicle] passenger . . . can recover under a Fourth Amendment theory”
for claims of excessive force.13 Underlying the circuit split over such claims
police about the Fourth Amendment—the United States Supreme Court—has often tried,
without much success, to alleviate society’s confusion about the amendment.”).
6. Andrew J. Mathern, Note, Federal Civil Rights Lawsuits and Civil Gideon: A Solution to Disproportionate Police Force?, 15 J. GENDER RACE & JUST. 353, 361 (2012) (“The
Supreme Court most commonly analyzes excessive force under either the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures or the substantive due process component of
the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”). See also Mary Helen Wimberly, Note, Rethinking
the Substantive Due Process Right to Privacy: Grounding Privacy in the Fourth Amendment,
60 VAND. L. REV. 283, 288–89 (2007) (discussing the first Supreme Court decision analyzing
the Fourth Amendment, Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), in which the Court
found that the Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment “run almost into each other”).
7. Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 7 (1985) (“[A]pprehension by the use of deadly
force is a seizure subject to the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment.”).
8. See discussion infra Parts II.A–C.
9. See Michael Mosley et al., Sixteen Years of Litigation Under the Arkansas Civil
Rights Act: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going, 32 U. ARK. LITTLE ROCK L.
REV. 173 (2010).
10. ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, FEDERAL JURISDICTION §§ 8–9, at 600 (6th ed. 2012).
11. 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1996).
12. Wayne A. Logan, Constitutional Cacophony: Federal Circuit Splits and the Fourth
Amendment, 65 VAND. L. REV. 1137, 1137–39 (2012) (noting that federal constitutional
rights “can and do often vary based on geographic location, and a chief source of this variation stems from . . . the nation’s federal circuit courts of appeals”). The principal case of this
note illustrates this issue: when a pursuit that began in Arkansas (within the Eighth Circuit
Court of Appeals) crossed into Tennessee (within the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals), the
parties left a federal circuit that does not recognize “accidental seizures” for a federal circuit
that does. See discussion infra Parts II.D–E.
13. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2022 n.4 (2014).
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is an even more fundamental divide on which of the Supreme Court’s definitions of a Fourth Amendment seizure applies in any given case.14
A police chase that originated in West Memphis, Arkansas, and ended
with gunfire in Memphis, Tennessee—leaving both the driver, Donald Rickard, and his passenger, Kelly Allen, dead—highlighted the current circuit
split over whether the Fourth or the Fourteenth Amendment protects victims
of “accidental seizures.”15 Given the importance of “‘develop[ing] constitutional precedent’ in an area” of law that governs police officers16 and ensuring constitutional safeguards for citizens who are “accidentally struck and
tragically killed,”17 this inquiry is ripe for consideration.18 Based on the Supreme Court’s existing seizure definitions, excessive-force decisions, and
treatment of negligence within the constitutional realm,19 the Court’s precedent establishes that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable seizures does not extend to accidental victims of deadly force used by
police. Such protection may arise, however, from other sources of substantive rights.
This note explores the historical development of the Supreme Court’s
analysis of seizure and use-of-force cases, examining federal circuit court
decisions involving seizure and excessive force claims brought by “accidental seizure” victims to highlight the current disagreement among federal
courts.20 Next, this note argues that the Supreme Court’s decisions involving
seizure by force, claims of negligence, and substantive due process do not
support Fourth Amendment claims arising from “accidental seizures,” which
must then be analyzed under the Fourteenth Amendment.21 This note analyzes the facts underlying Plumhoff v. Rickard22 and answers in the negative
14. See discussion infra Part II.A.
15. See Plumhoff, 134 S. Ct. at 2022 n.4.
16. Id. at 2020 (quoting Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009)).
17. Tina Sfondeles, Bettie Jones Was the ‘Glue’ of Her Family, Mourners Say at Visitation, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES (Jan. 5, 2016), http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/bettie-jones-wasthe-glue-of-her-family-mourners-say-at-visitation (quoting a police statement issued after the
shooting death of Bettie Jones, who was accidentally killed at her Chicago home when a
police officer shot and killed her teenage neighbor, who became combative when the officer
arrived).
18. Claims of excessive force are among the most common civil rights claims and represent a significant portion of federal courts’ section 1983 docket. See Diana Hassel, Excessive
Reasonableness, 43 IND. L. REV. 117, 121 (2009). Although analyzing seizures has given rise
to a number of disagreements among the federal circuits, see Logan, supra note 12, at 1137,
the Supreme Court is unable to address even half of those circuit splits identified by litigants
because the Court hears so few cases. Tracey E. George & Chris Guthrie, Remaking the United States Supreme Court in the Courts’ of Appeals Image, 58 DUKE L.J. 1439, 1449 (2009).
19. See discussion infra Parts III.A–B.
20. See discussion infra Parts II.A–C.
21. See discussion infra Part III.
22. 134 S. Ct. 2012 (2014).
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whether someone in Kelly Allen’s position23 can recover on a Fourth
Amendment claim under existing Supreme Court precedent.24
II. THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY’S ANALYSIS OF SEIZURES AND CLAIMS OF
EXCESSIVE FORCE
Courts have interpreted both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments
as prohibiting the use of excessive force by police officers.25 While both
amendments protect the fundamental right to personal security,26 the Supreme Court has expressly rejected the notion that all excessive force claims
brought under section 1983 are governed by “a single generic standard.”27
Nonetheless, excessive police force may violate the Fourth Amendment’s
prohibition of unreasonable seizures and the substantive due process component of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits egregious conduct.28
Thus, determining the constitutionality of police officers’ use of force potentially requires courts to analyze both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, but determining the definition of a seizure is a threshold matter that
must be addressed before the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness standard
can be applied.29 Accordingly, examining the Supreme Court’s definitions of
a seizure is critical to understanding claims that arise in a muddled area of
an already confusing constitutional doctrine.
A.
The Fourth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s Definition of Seizure
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated
. . . .”30 No denial of constitutional protection “is so effective in cowing a
population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every
23. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2022 n.4 (2014).
24. See discussion infra Part III.D.
25. Kathryn R. Urbonya, The Constitutionality of High-Speed Pursuits Under the Fourth
and Fourteenth Amendments, 35 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 205, 209–10 (1991) [hereinafter Urbonya,
Constitutionality of High-Speed Pursuits].
26. Kathryn R. Urbonya, Public School Officials’ Use of Physical Force as a Fourth Amendment Seizure: Protecting Students from the Constitutional Chasm Between the Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendments, 69 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1, 3 (2000). See also Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 650
(1979) (analyzing “an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments”).
27. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 387 (1989).
28. Urbonya, Constitutionality of High-Speed Pursuits, supra note 25, at 207–09.
29. Id. at 209. See also Graham, 490 U.S. at 386.
30. U.S. CONST. amend. IV. The touchstone of analysis under the Fourth Amendment “is
always ‘the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of
a citizen’s personal security.’” Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 108–09 (1977) (citation omitted); Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 360 (2001).
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heart” as the deprivation of rights secured by the Fourth Amendment.31 The
liberty secured by the Fourth Amendment is a freedom “made in America,”
one rooted in the colonists’ revolt against the heavy-handed law enforcement methods of the British.32 The protections of the Fourth Amendment
“apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employe[e]s of
the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.”33
Historically, a seizure required a police officer to either physically restrain or arrest a person to trigger the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of
unreasonable seizures.34 The American colonists sought safeguards “against
the arbitrary exercise of government power . . . [and] intentional misconduct
by government officials,”35 and the Fourth Amendment’s coupling of the
words “persons and things to be seized” evidenced the Framers’ intent to
prohibit arbitrary arrests.36 However, the Fourth Amendment as ratified in
1791 “had both the virtue of brevity and the vice of ambiguity.”37
More than 200 years after its ratification, the Fourth Amendment continues to precipitate novel constitutional questions and innovative variations
on the familiar themes of search and seizure.38 Determining with consistency
when government actors have effected a seizure of an individual within the
meaning of the Fourth Amendment has been a difficult task for the Supreme
Court of the United States.39 As Professor La Fave has noted, the Court for
many years did not provide a workable definition of what government conduct amounted to a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.40
Thus, a fundamental problem with analyzing Fourth Amendment law is
that it is convoluted and does little to inform the lower courts and the very
officials whom the amendment was ratified to govern.41 In the context of
seizure by deadly force, an additional problem arises in distinguishing torts
actionable under state law from constitutional violations, which may be
31. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 180 (1949) (Jackson, J., dissenting).
32. Tracey Maclin, The Complexity of the Fourth Amendment: A Historical Review, 77
B.U. L. REV. 925, 926 (1997).
33. Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630 (1886).
34. Pamela A. Lemoins, Comment, Brendlin v. California: Riding Shotgun with the
Fourth Amendment, 35 S.U. L. REV. 573, 581 (2008).
35. Ronald J. Bacigal, In Pursuit of the Elusive Fourth Amendment: The Police Chase
Cases, 58 TENN. L. REV. 73, 93 (1990) [hereinafter Bacigal, In Pursuit].
36. JACOB W. LANDYNSKI, SEARCH AND SEIZURE AND THE SUPREME COURT: A STUDY IN
CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION 42, 45 (1966).
37. Id. at 44–45.
38. Bacigal, In Pursuit, supra note 35, at 73.
39. Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 342; Lemoins, supra note 34, at
581 (“Historically, the Supreme Court struggled to perfect a test to determine when a policecitizen encounter rose to the level of a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”).
40. See 3 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH & SEIZURE § 5.1(a) (5th ed. 2012).
41. Craig M. Bradley, Two Models of the Fourth Amendment, 83 MICH. L. REV. 1468,
1472 (1985).
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remedied under section 1983.42 The confusion is compounded by an underlying circuit split over which of the Supreme Court’s many definitions of a
seizure applies in any given case.43
1.
The “Reasonable Person” Test for Seizures
Terry v. Ohio44 has been described as “the big bang that starts the modern world of variable levels of seizures of the person.”45 In an opinion written by Chief Justice Warren, the majority in Terry rejected the notion that
the Fourth Amendment is inapplicable if an officer stops short of something
called a “technical arrest.”46 The Court held “that whenever a police officer
accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has ‘seized’
that person.”47
Terry thus extended the scope of the Fourth Amendment to include
temporary detentions that stop short of full custodial arrests.48 The Supreme
Court subsequently recognized a wide range of potential police-citizen encounters that implicate the Fourth Amendment’s protections.49 Determining
the scope of the Fourth Amendment after Terry has proved difficult, however, as the Supreme Court’s seizure analysis “evolved into this puzzling
patchwork of three tests that are sometimes complementary and sometimes
inconsistent.”50
Twelve years after Terry, a faction of the Court in United States v.
Mendenhall51 recognized that a person is seized within the meaning of the
Fourth Amendment “only if, in view of all of the circumstances surrounding
the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to
leave.”52 Justice Stewart, writing only for himself and then-Justice
Rehnquist, echoed the Terry definition of a seizure before announcing the
“reasonable person” test to determine when an officer restrains a person’s
freedom to walk away from the encounter.53
42. Mark Albert Mesler II, Note, When an Innocent Bystander Who Is Injured by A
Police Officer Can Recover Under § 1983, 25 U. MEM. L. REV. 781, 782 (1995).
43. Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 340 (1992).
44. 392 U.S. 1 (1968).
45. Ronald J. Bacigal, A Unified Theory for Seizures of the Person, 81 MISS. L.J. 915,
916 (2012) [hereinafter Bacigal, A Unified Theory].
46. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 (1968).
47. Id. at 16.
48. Ronald J. Bacigal, The Right of the People to Be Secure, 82 KY. L.J. 145, 152 (1994)
[hereinafter Bacigal, The Right of the People].
49. Christian J. Rowley, Note, Florida v. Bostick: The Fourth Amendment—Another
Casualty of the War on Drugs, 1992 UTAH L. REV. 601, 608 (1992).
50. Bacigal, A Unified Theory, supra note 45, at 923.
51. 446 U.S. 544 (1980).
52. Id. at 554.
53. Id.
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Although Justice Stewart’s pronouncement did not garner the support
of five justices in Mendenhall, the “reasonable person” test gradually gained
acceptance as the standard to determine when a seizure takes place in situations short of a physical restraint.54 Addressing seizure issues related to a
brief automobile chase, a unanimous court in Michigan v. Chesternut55
acknowledged the Court’s acceptance of the “necessarily imprecise” test
announced in Mendenhall, explaining that no mechanical rule applicable to
all investigatory pursuits could be fashioned within the meaning of a seizure.56 In a concurrence joined by Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy foreshadowed the Supreme Court’s departure from the Mendenhall “reasonable person” test that would materialize in Justice Scalia’s opinions in Brower v.
County of Inyo57 and California v. Hodari D.,58 both decided within three
years of Chesternut.59
2.
The Departure From the ‘Reasonable Person’ Test
Brower marked the Court’s shift away from the “reasonable person”
test.60 The case involved a twenty-mile high-speed chase, which ended when
the driver of a stolen car crashed into a police roadblock and died.61 The
Supreme Court granted certiorari62 to resolve a conflict between the Ninth
and Fifth Circuit.63
Justice Scalia’s majority opinion did not mention Mendenhall and its
“reasonable person” formulation, but rather held that a physical seizure occurs “only when there is a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied.”64 In a separate opinion joined by
54. Thomas K. Clancy, The Supreme Court’s Search for a Definition of a Seizure: What
Is a “Seizure” of a Person Within the Meaning of the Fourth Amendment?, 27 AM. CRIM. L.
REV. 619, 626–27 (1990). See also Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 501–02 (1983); INS v.
Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 215 (1984).
55. 486 U.S. 567 (1988).
56. Lemoins, supra note 34, at 583.
57. 489 U.S. 593 (1989).
58. 499 U.S. 621 (1991).
59. Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 577 (1988) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (“It is
at least plausible to say that whether or not the officers’ conduct communicates to a person a
reasonable belief that they intend to apprehend him, such conduct does not implicate Fourth
Amendment protections until it achieves a restraining effect.”).
60. See infra notes 63–76 and accompanying text.
61. Brower, 489 U.S. at 594.
62. 487 U.S. 1217 (1988).
63. Jamieson v. Shaw, 772 F.2d 1205 (5th Cir. 1985).
64. Brower, 489 U.S. at 597 (emphasis in original). See also Allison K. Wyman, Note,
Seized by the Moment-But Which Moment? How a Physical Force Seizure Requires Only
Contact with Intent to Restrain, Not Intentional Termination of Movement, 48 AM. CRIM. L.
REV. 1485, 1486 (2011).
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three other justices, Justice Stevens recognized the majority’s departure
from the “well-established rule” from Mendenhall.65 In Brower, the Court
established the requirements for a seizure: termination of movement and the
intent to seize,66 and the decision established “that the reasonable perceptions of the Mendenhall test are not enough to trigger Fourth Amendment
protections.”67
What Justice Scalia began in Brower he completed two years later in
Hodari D.: displacing Mendenhall as the exclusive test for analyzing seizures.68 In Hodari D., two officers patrolling the streets of Oakland chased
Hodari, who fled upon seeing the officers and discarded what was later discovered to be crack cocaine before he was tackled and arrested by one of the
officers.69 The Supreme Court granted certiorari70 to decide “whether, at the
time he dropped the drugs, Hodari had been ‘seized’ within the meaning of
the Fourth Amendment.”71
Justice Scalia, writing for a seven-justice majority, continued the departure “from the Mendenhall ‘reasonable person’ test and held that a police-citizen encounter amounted to a seizure only if the suspect, when faced
with a show of authority, yielded to that show of authority.”72 The majority
explained that “[t]he word ‘seizure’ readily bears the meaning of a laying on
of hands or application of physical force to restrain movement, even when it
is ultimately unsuccessful.”73 The Court distinguished show-of-authority
seizures by the absence of physical force and defined physical seizures as
common-law arrests, “where intentional physical force, regardless of its
success, constitutes a seizure.”74
Hodari D. thus clarified the relationship between the Mendenhall test
and the seizure standards announced in both Brower and Hodari D. by dismissing the Mendenhall test as “a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition
for seizure.”75 The Court now analyzes a Fourth Amendment seizure claim
based on whether the officer applied intentional physical force that resulted
in contact, or, where no contact occurred, whether the suspect’s freedom of
65. Brower, 489 U.S. at 600 (Stevens, J., concurring).
66. Wyman, supra note 64, at 1488.
67. Bacigal, A Unified Theory, supra note 45, at 921.
68. Continuing the departure from the Mendenhall standard, the Supreme Court in Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429 (1991), developed another “reasonable person” test: whether a
reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the
encounter. Lemoins, supra note 34, at 584–85.
69. California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 622–23 (1991).
70. 498 U.S. 807 (1990).
71. Hodari D., 499 U.S. at 623.
72. Lemoins, supra note 34, at 584 (emphasis added).
73. Wyman, supra note 64, at 1486.
74. Id. at 1493 (emphasis omitted).
75. Hodari D., 499 U.S. at 628 (emphasis omitted).
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movement was terminated by his submission to a show of police authority.76
Under Hodari D., neither the “reasonable person” test of Mendenhall nor the
intentional means test of Brower is sufficient to constitute a seizure until
police completely eliminate the suspect’s physical ability to escape.77
The Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in Brendlin v. California,78 in which all nine justices agreed that when an officer pulls over an
automobile, “the passenger is automatically seized [under] the Fourth
Amendment because a passenger is subject to an officer’s authority and
cannot ignore the officer’s presence and walk away.”79 In Brendlin, Justice
Souter cobbled a seizure definition from Florida v. Bostick,80 Brower, and
Hodari D.,81 and cited Mendenhall as the test for when police conduct does
not “show an unambiguous intent to restrain or when an individual’s submission to a show of governmental authority takes the form of passive acquiescence.”82 Justice Souter’s opinion for the unanimous court in Brendlin
explained that the crux of Brower was not that the plaintiff alone was the
target, but rather that officers detained him “through means intentionally
applied.”83 If there was a passenger in the car, Justice Souter continued, it
would have made sense to hold that the passenger was seized when the car
collided with the roadblock.84
From these cases arose a conflict among the circuits that highlights the
“contradictory sentiments expressed in Brower and Hodari D. regarding the
definition of a physical seizure.”85 The federal courts are split over whether
a physical seizure requires intent and termination of movement under Brower or simply intent and physical contact under Hodari D.86 Thus, courts
tasked with analyzing police shootings face the challenge of determining
which seizure definition applies, choosing a standard used in a factually
similar case, or crafting an ad hoc rule based on the facts of the case.87 This
very question—that remains unresolved among the circuits—of whether the
76. Wyman, supra note 64, at 1497.
77. Bacigal, A Unified Theory, supra note 45, at 922.
78. 551 U.S. 249 (2007).
79. Lemoins, supra note 34, at 573–74.
80. 501 U.S. 429 (1991).
81. Brendlin, 551 U.S. 249, 254 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted) (citations
omitted).
82. Id. at 255.
83. Id. at 261.
84. Id. The Court in Brendlin rejected the State of California’s position that a seizure
requires a purposeful, deliberate act of detaining a passenger, noting that in Lewis the Court
“did not even consider, let alone emphasize, the possibility that the officer had meant to detain the driver only and not the passenger.” Id.
85. Wyman, supra note 64, at 1492.
86. Id. at 1489.
87. Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 340.
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intentional application of force by police officers amounts to a seizure when
the suspect continues flight was implicated by the facts of Plumhoff.88 Settling the physical seizure conflict would necessarily help resolve the question of whether a passenger in Kelly Allen’s position89 can recover under the
Fourth Amendment.90 But whether a seizure occurs is a threshold matter,
and the Supreme Court’s excessive force decisions instruct that relief may
be available to victims of “accidental seizures” under the Fourteenth
Amendment rather than the Fourth Amendment.
B.
The Supreme Court’s Excessive Force Decisions Under Both the
Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments
In addressing an excessive force claim brought under section 1983, a
court’s analysis begins by “identifying the specific constitutional right allegedly infringed by the challenged application of force.”91 Although Garner
established that apprehension—i.e., seizure—by the use of deadly force is
subject to scrutiny under the Fourth Amendment,92 the Court’s analysis was
simply an application of the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness test.93
Only subjects of police force who can allege a “seizure” under the Fourth
Amendment trigger the reasonableness test;94 other victims of law enforcement excessive force are protected through the Fourteenth Amendment and
its guarantee of substantive due process.95 Preserving constitutional protection under the Fourteenth Amendment—rather than the Fourth—in the context of the use of deadly force suggests that such force may be egregious.96
By recognizing substantive due process as a basis for infringements of
the right to life and personal security, the Supreme Court has clarified that
both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments are possible bases for constitu88. See Wyman, supra note 64, at 1485.
89. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2022 n.4 (2014).
90. See Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 341 (arguing that the Supreme Court’s different approaches to defining Fourth Amendment seizures require lower
courts to rely upon their own interpretation of the Fourth Amendment).
91. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 394 (1989).
92. Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 7 (1985). Three justices subsequently rejected the
notion that Garner implicitly held that all excessive force claims are to be analyzed under the
Fourth Amendment rather than a substantive due process standard. Graham, 490 U.S. at 399–
400 (Blackmun, J., concurring).
93. See Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 382 (2007).
94. Randolph Alexander Piedrahita, Note, A Conservative Court Says “Goodbye to All
That” and Forges a New Order in the Law of Seizure-California v. Hodari D., 52 LA. L. REV.
1321, 1322 (1992).
95. Renée Paradis, Note, Carpe Demonstratores: Towards A Bright-Line Rule Governing Seizure in Excessive Force Claims Brought by Demonstrators, 103 COLUM. L. REV. 316,
316 (2003).
96. See Urbonya, Constitutionality of High-Speed Pursuits, supra note 25, at 267.
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tional scrutiny of officials’ conduct.97 The application of the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Due Process Clause as a constitutional safeguard against excessive police force emerged in the landmark case of Rochin v. California.98
Antonio Richard Rochin’s conviction for possession of morphine was reversed after police officers had Rochin’s stomach forcibly pumped when he
swallowed two capsules of the drug in front of the officers.99 Evoking Justice Cardozo, the Supreme Court in Rochin defined the Due Process Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment as “a summarized constitutional guarantee of
respect for those personal immunities [that] . . . are ‘so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental’ or are
‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’”100
In the Fourth Amendment context, Garner was a watershed decision,
because the Supreme Court invalidated the common-law view that police
officers may use deadly force if they reasonably believe it necessary to prevent the escape of a person fleeing from a felony arrest.101 In Garner, the
Court held unconstitutional a Tennessee statute that authorized police officers to use “all the necessary means” to effect an arrest of a fleeing or forcibly resisting suspect after a Memphis policeman shot and killed a fleeing
teenage burglar despite being “reasonably sure” the suspect was unarmed.102
The Garner majority emphasized that the original justifications for the
common-law rule did not apply in the modern judicial system and that the
trend among the states was away from the common-law rule.103 However,
Garner was limited to circumstances where a suspect was “actually apprehended;” otherwise, there is no “seizure” for Fourth Amendment purposes.104
Following Garner and almost forty years after Rochin, the Supreme
Court in Graham v. Connor105 clarified that all claims that law enforcement
officers used excessive force in the course of a seizure should be analyzed
97. Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 376. Although not before the Supreme
Court, Justice Harlan recognized that the issues arising in Terry implicated “protections afforded
by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 31 (Harlan, J., concurring).
98. E. Bryan MacDonald, Note, Graham v. Connor: A Reasonable Approach to Excessive Force Claims Against Police Officers, 22 PAC. L.J. 157, 159 (1990). In an earlier case,
the Court held that confessions extorted by police officers who physically tortured three
murder suspects violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown v.
State of Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 280 (1936).
99. Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 166 (1952).
100. Id. at 169 (citation omitted).
101. 3 LAFAVE, supra note 40, § 5.1(d).
102. Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 3–4 (1985).
103. 3 LAFAVE, supra note 39, § 5.1(d).
104. Garner, 471 U.S. at 31 (O’Connor, J., dissenting).
105. 490 U.S. 386 (1989).
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under the Fourth Amendment.106 Prior to Graham, federal courts were uncertain concerning the source of constitutional protection for individuals
claiming excessive force during seizure.107 Several courts looked to the
Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process to test the constitutionality of excessive force during seizure,108 while others applied Fourth
Amendment analysis for similar claims.109This issue persists as the circuit
courts remain split over whether “accidental seizure” victims can recover
under the Fourth Amendment against police officers who use deadly
force.110
C.
The Convergence of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments
In the realm of excessive force claims that hover between the Fourth
and Fourteenth Amendments, the Supreme Court’s most recent decision
came in County of Sacramento v. Lewis.111 In Plumhoff, Justice Alito’s majority opinion cited Lewis after recognizing the current circuit split over
whether someone like Kelly Allen could bring a Fourth Amendment
claim.112 This aside has already been viewed as affirming the relevance of
Lewis and establishing “that even fatal injury does not constitute seizure
[absent] the requisite intent to detain.”113 Thus, for the purposes of this note,
the Supreme Court’s decision in Lewis merits careful examination.
In Lewis, a teenager riding as a passenger on a motorcycle died after
the motorcycle crashed and a pursuing police vehicle accidentally ran over
the passenger.114 The Supreme Court granted certiorari115 “to resolve a conflict among the Circuits over the standard of culpability on the part of a law
enforcement officer for violating substantive due process in a pursuit
case.”116
106. Mitchell W. Karsch, Note, Excessive Force and the Fourth Amendment: When Does
Seizure End?, 58 FORDHAM L. REV. 823, 823 (1990).
107. Graham, 490 U.S. at 393 (citation omitted) (“[M]any courts have seemed to assume,
as did the courts below in this case, that there is a generic ‘right’ to be free from excessive
force, grounded not in any particular constitutional provision but rather in ‘basic principles of
§ 1983 jurisprudence.’”).
108. See Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172 (1952).
109. Garner, 471 U.S. at 7.
110. See discussion infra Part II.D.
111. 523 U.S. 833 (1998).
112. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2022 n.4 (2014).
113. West v. Davis, 767 F.3d 1063, 1074 (11th Cir. 2014) (Benavides, J., dissenting).
114. Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 837 (1998).
115. 520 U.S. 1250 (1997).
116. Lewis, 523 U.S. at 839.
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While Lewis is recognized for establishing the level of culpability necessary to sustain a due process claim under the Fourteenth Amendment,117
the Supreme Court had occasion to analyze whether the motorcycle passenger was seized when he was accidentally struck by the police officer’s car,
which would, under Graham, determine whether the plaintiffs could sustain
a due process claim rather than a claim under the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness standard.118 In Lewis, the Supreme Court found that the passenger had not been seized.119
Justice Souter explained that under Hodari D. “a police pursuit in attempting to seize a person does not amount to a ‘seizure’ within the meaning
of the Fourth Amendment.”120 Nor did a seizure occur absent “a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied” under Brower.121 Justice Souter found that the facts of Lewis were
analogous to a hypothetical scenario discussed in Brower where no seizure
would occur: a police car attempts to stop a suspect only by a show of authority—flashing lights—and in continuing pursuit accidentally stops the
suspect by crashing into him.122
Thus, the motorcycle passenger in Lewis was not seized within the
meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and the plaintiffs’ claims were analyzed
under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.123 Lewis supports the proposition that not all physical force applied by police to private
citizens amounts to a seizure and that substantive due process remains a
viable source of constitutional protection for “accidental seizure” victims. 124
Because excessive force claims brought by passengers who are inadvertently
injured or killed by police gunfire invoke the Supreme Court’s somewhat
117. See Bonnie E. Bull, In Pursuit of A Remedy: A Need for Reform of Police Officer
Liability, 64 S.C. L. REV. 1015, 1029–30 (2013).
118. Lewis, 523 U.S. at 842.
119. Id. at 843.
120. Id. at 843–44 (citing California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 626 (1991)).
121. Id. at 844 (quoting Brower v. Cnty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596–597 (1989)) (emphasis omitted).
122. Id.
123. Id. (reviewing federal court decisions and explaining that, “outside the context of a
seizure, . . . a person injured as a result of police misconduct may prosecute a substantive due
process claim under section 1983”) (alteration in original) (citation omitted).
124. See Karen M. Blum & John J. Ryan, Recent Developments in the Use of Excessive Force
by Law Enforcement, 24 TOURO L. REV. 569, 578–79 (2008); Thomas K. Clancy, The Fourth
Amendment as a Collective Right, 43 TEX. TECH L. REV. 255, 265 (2010). Support for this position
also appears in the Court’s earlier decisions in Hodari D. and Bostick. See Bacigal, The Right of the
People, supra note 48, at 184 (arguing that Bostick “implies that the Hodari decision is supple
enough to recognize that certain forms of touching are insufficient for a seizure”); Wyman, supra
note 64, at 1499 (“Bostick is correct in recognizing that certain forms of touching do not constitute a
seizure.”).
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muddled seizure doctrine, the federal courts analyzing such claims have
arrived at conflicting conclusions.125
D.
The Circuit Courts Are Divided on the Issue of Whether Passengers,
Hostages, and Bystanders Can Bring Excessive Force Claims Under
the Fourth Amendment
The existing case law regarding whether unintended targets of police
gunfire during pursuits are seized under the Fourth Amendment is far from
settled.126 Some courts interpret Brower to require an objective intent to stop
a particular individual, and others require an objective intent to use means
which results in a stop, whether of a known or unknown person.127 Courts
have also disagreed about whether a seizure requires an intent to harm or an
intent to stop.128 Adding to the discord are the circuit courts’ differing approaches to analyzing the Fourth Amendment based on whether the claimant
is a suspect, a hostage, or an unsuspecting passerby.129
While most bystander cases were decided prior to Brendlin, which
seemed to steer Fourth Amendment analysis toward “objective intent,”
Brendlin did not abandon statements in Brower that led lower courts and
commentators to focus to some degree on the subjective intent of the officers in analyzing Fourth Amendment claims.130 Indeed, the enduring requirement from Brower—that some level of purely subjective intent to seize
is required to trigger the protection of the Fourth Amendment—has led the
lower courts to equate an “acquisition of control over a suspect [with] a ‘seizure’ only if the officer intended to accomplish this by the means actually
used to do so.”131 A sharp circuit split has emerged.
1.
Circuits That Permit “Accidental Seizure” Victims to Bring
Claims Under the Fourth Amendment
Courts that permit innocent passengers to bring Fourth Amendment
claims against police officers who use deadly force during pursuits endorse
the limiting language of Brower that courts cannot draw too fine a line when
determining whether the means that terminates the freedom of movement is
125. See discussion infra Part II.D.
126. Cooper v. Rutherford, 503 F. App’x 672, 676 (11th Cir. 2012) (collecting cases).
127. Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 369.
128. Id. at 371.
129. See Vaughan v. Cox, 343 F.3d 1323, 1328 n.4 (11th Cir. 2003).
130. Gardner v. Bd. of Police Comm’rs, for Kansas City, Mo., 641 F.3d 947, 952–53 (8th
Cir. 2011).
131. George E. Dix, Subjective “Intent” as a Component of Fourth Amendment Reasonableness, 76 MISS. L.J. 373, 378 (2006).
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the very means that the government intended.132 In Vaughan v. Cox,133 the
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit considered Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendment claims134 against a police officer who shot at the driver of a
speeding vehicle in which the passenger—also a suspect—was riding, accidentally hitting and killing the passenger.135 In finding that the passenger
was seized when he was struck by the officer’s bullet, the Eleventh Circuit
explained that it was not necessary for the means by which a suspect is
seized to conform exactly to the means intended by the officer.136 The court
found that the officer fired his weapon to stop the vehicle and its occupants,
and because the passenger was hit by a bullet that was meant to stop him, he
was subjected to a Fourth Amendment seizure.137
Likewise, in Fisher v. City of Memphis,138 the Sixth Circuit considered
the Fourth Amendment claim of a passenger who was struck by a bullet
fired by a police officer who, to avoid being hit by the vehicle in which the
passenger was riding, jumped on the hood of his own vehicle and simultaneously fired at the vehicle.139 The Sixth Circuit found that the car was the
intended target of the officer’s intentionally applied exertion of force and
that by shooting at the driver of the moving car, the officer intended to stop
the car, effectively seizing everyone inside.140
132. Vaughan, 343 F.3d at 1329.
133. 343 F.3d 1323 (11th Cir. 2003).
134. Interestingly, the Eleventh Circuit, after determining the passenger was seized within
the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, found the Fourteenth Amendment claim lacked merit
under Lewis rather than that the claim was covered by the Fourth Amendment under Graham.
Vaughan, 343 F.3d at 1333.
135. Id. at 1328. The Vaughan court recognized that a different analysis was required for
Fourth Amendment claims brought by passengers who were suspects rather than hostages or
innocent bystanders. Id., at 1328 n.4; Cooper v. Rutherford, 503 F. App’x 672, 675 (11th Cir.
2012) (“However, this court just as clearly acknowledged the difference between the events
in Vaughan and . . . when an innocent bystander or hostage is accidentally shot by police
officers chasing a fleeing suspect.”).
136. Vaughan, 343 F.3d at 1329.
137. Id. See also Jamieson v. Shaw, 772 F.2d 1205, 1209–11 (5th Cir. 1985) (holding a
passenger was seized when vehicle collided with police roadblock).
138. 234 F.3d 312 (6th Cir. 2000).
139. Id. at 315.
140. Id. at 318–19. The Sixth Circuit affirmed Fisher in Rodriguez v. Passinault, 637
F.3d 675, 686 (6th Cir. 2011) (“Under Fisher, an officer’s intentionally applied exertion of
force directed at a vehicle to stop it effectuates a seizure of all occupants therein.”). However,
there is conflicting authority within the Sixth Circuit regarding the viability of a bystander’s
Fourth Amendment claim. See Claybrook v. Birchwell, 199 F.3d 350, 359 (6th Cir. 2000)
(“[T]he Fourth Amendment ‘reasonableness’ standard does not apply to section 1983 claims
which seek remuneration for physical injuries inadvertently inflicted upon an innocent third
party by police officers’ use of force while attempting to seize a perpetrator, because the
authorities could not ‘seize’ any person other than one who was a deliberate object of their
exertion of force.”).
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Similarly, the Fourth Circuit found a seizure occurred when a thirteenyear-old boy was accidentally bitten by a police patrol dog used by an officer to find the boy, who was reported missing.141 In Melgar ex rel. Melgar
v. Greene,142 the court interpreted Brower to mean that “so long as the instrumentality is intended, a seizure occurs even if the degree of the instrumentality’s effectiveness was unanticipated.”143 The Fourth Circuit reasoned
that the officer specifically used the dog to locate the boy, and found that the
fact that the seizure did not occur in the manner envisioned by the officer
was not outcome determinative.144
These decisions rely on a more expansive interpretation of intent to
seize under Brower, allowing Fourth Amendment claims notwithstanding
the absence of intent to seize a specific person, such as passengers who are
inadvertently struck by gunfire when police fire at vehicles.145 This approach
is rejected by the majority of federal circuits that interpret Brower to require
intent to seize a particular person.146
2.
Circuits That Do Not Permit “Accidental Seizure” Victims to
Bring Claims Under the Fourth Amendment
The majority of circuits analyzes an accidental shooting victim’s excessive force claim using the substantive due process framework. 147 The
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Rucker v. Hardford County.,
Maryland.148 held that Brower directly foreclosed a Fourth Amendment
claim by a plaintiff who was not the intended object of a police shooting by
which he was injured.149 The Rucker court rejected the plaintiff’s argument
that a seizure occurs if the act of restraint itself is intended—e.g., the act of
shooting—and restrains one not intended to be restrained.150 Ten years later
in Milstead v. Kibler,151 the Fourth Circuit again discussed two types of “accidental seizures”: when an officer shoots at a suspect but misses, accidently
141. Melgar ex rel. Melgar v. Greene, 593 F.3d 348, 351 (4th Cir. 2010). Like the Sixth
Circuit, there is conflicting authority within the Fourth Circuit regarding “accidental seizures.” See infra notes 148–152 and accompanying text.
142. 593 F.3d 348 (4th Cir. 2010).
143. Id. at 354 (emphasis omitted).
144. Id. The Melgar decision appears to be an application of the instruction in Brower
that it is “enough for a seizure that a person be stopped by the very instrumentality set in
motion or put in place in order to achieve that result.” Brower v. Cnty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593,
599 (1989).
145. See supra notes 131–139 and accompanying text.
146. See discussion infra Part II.D.2.
147. See infra notes 147–161.
148. 946 F.2d 278 (4th Cir. 1991).
149. Id. at 281.
150. Id.
151. 243 F.3d 157, 163 (4th Cir. 2001).
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hitting a bystander, and when an officer shoots “at a person he believes to be
the suspect and hits the intended target, but . . . the target was misidentified
and turns out to be an innocent victim.”152 Relying on Brower, the Fourth
Circuit again found that no seizure occurs in the first situation “because the
means of the seizure were not deliberately applied to the victim.”153
In Landol–Rivera v. Cruz Cosme,154 the Court of Appeals for the First
Circuit held that no seizure occurred when a hostage taken during an armed
robbery was inadvertently struck by police gunfire when the suspect began
fleeing in a car.155 Also relying on Brower, the Landol–Rivera court found
that a “police officer’s deliberate decision to shoot at a car containing a robber and a hostage for the purpose of stopping the robber’s flight does not
result in the sort of willful detention of the hostage that the Fourth Amendment was designed to govern.”156
Similarly, the Second Circuit held that a hostage who was accidentally
shot when police fired at his captor had no interest protected by the Fourth
Amendment,157 and the Tenth Circuit rejected a hostage’s Fourth Amendment claim because there was not intent to seize the hostage.158 The Court of
Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit applied similar reasoning in upholding a
district court’s jury instruction “that negligent conduct alone absent any intentional government conduct could not form the basis” of a Fourth
Amendment claim brought under section 1983.159
The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit takes a slightly different
approach. By analyzing a defendant officer’s subjective intent, the Eighth
Circuit requires a plaintiff to show that a defendant officer intended to seize
the plaintiff through the means applied to the plaintiff (e.g., gunfire) to establish a Fourth Amendment claim.160 The Ninth Circuit adopted a similar
152. Id. at 163.
153. Id. at 163–64.
154. 906 F.2d 791 (1st Cir. 1990).
155. Id. at 795.
156. Id. (emphasis omitted).
157. Medeiros v. O’Connell, 150 F.3d 164, 168 (2d Cir. 1998). The Court of Appeals for
the Third Circuit, citing Medeiros, explained that “if a police officer fires his gun at a fleeing
robbery suspect and the bullet inadvertently strikes an innocent bystander, there has been no
Fourth Amendment seizure.” Berg v. Cnty. of Allegheny, 219 F.3d 261, 269 (3d Cir. 2000).
158. Childress v. City of Arapaho, 210 F.3d 1154, 1156–57 (10th Cir. 2000). See also
Clark v. Edmunds, 513 F.3d 1219, 1222 (10th Cir. 2008) (finding no seizure when sheriff
shoved plaintiff to the ground because the “sheriff only intended to remove Plaintiff from his
path to the door; he did not intend to acquire physical control over her”).
159. Ansley v. Heinrich, 925 F.2d 1339, 1344 (11th Cir. 1991).
160. Moore v. Indehar, 514 F.3d 756, 760 (8th Cir. 2008) (“As other circuits have explained, bystanders are not seized for Fourth Amendment purposes when struck by an errant
bullet in a shootout.”); Simpson v. City of Fort Smith, 389 F. App’x 568, 571 (8th Cir. 2010)
(citing Moore and holding no seizure occurred where plaintiff “presented no evidence that
[he] was struck by anything other than an errant bullet”).
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framework in Lewis v. Sacramento County although no Fourth Amendment
claim was before the court.161
Thus, the circuits that do not recognize Fourth Amendment claims for
“accidental seizure” victims reject the notion that the intention requirement
under Brower is met by the deliberateness with which a given action is taken.162 Pointing to Brower, these circuits distinguish between “police action
directed toward producing a particular result—in Fourth Amendment parlance, ‘an intentional acquisition of physical control’—and police action that
simply causes a particular result.”163 In the context of the application of
physical force during police chases, the circuits that permit Fourth Amendment claims use a broader notion of intent, and apply it to vehicles rather
than people.164 Amid this backdrop, the Supreme Court decided Plumhoff,
but, appropriately, did not reach the question of whether Kelly Allen, as a
passenger, could recover under the Fourth Amendment.165
E.
The Supreme Court’s Decision in Plumhoff
The events giving rise to Plumhoff began around “midnight on July 18,
2004, [when] Lieutenant Joseph Forthman of the West Memphis, Arkansas,
Police Department pulled over a white Honda Accord because the car had
only one operating headlight.”166 “Donald Rickard was the driver of the Accord, and Kelly Allen was in the passenger seat.”167 “Forthman noticed an
indentation, ‘roughly the size of a basketball,’ in the windshield of the
car.”168 Donald Rickard appeared nervous and let Kelly Allen speak with
Forthman, who asked Donald Rickard to step out of the car after he failed to
produce his driver’s license.169 “Rather than comply with Forthman’s request, [Donald] Rickard” fled.170
“Forthman gave chase and was soon joined by five other police cruisers[, one] driven by Sergeant Vance Plumhoff,” the eponymous petitioner.171
“The officers pursued [Donald] Rickard east on Interstate 40 toward Mem161. Lewis v. Sacramento Cnty., 98 F.3d 434, 438 n. 3 (9th Cir. 1996), rev’d sub nom.
Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998) (discussing Brower and explaining that
because it is was undisputed that defendant officer did not intend to hit the plaintiff with his
patrol car, “[t]here was thus no Fourth Amendment violation”).
162. Landol-Rivera v. Cruz Cosme, 906 F.2d 791, 795 (1st Cir. 1990).
163. Id. (emphasis omitted).
164. See supra notes 147–161 and accompanying text.
165. See discussion infra Part III.D.
166. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2017 (2014).
167. Id.
168. Id.
169. Id.
170. Id.
171. Id.
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phis, Tennessee,” and “attempted to stop [him] using ‘a rolling roadblock,’
but they were unsuccessful.”172 The vehicles “swerv[ed] through traffic at
high speeds,” reaching speeds over 100 miles per hour.173 “During the chase,
[Donald] Rickard and the officers passed more than two dozen vehicles”
before Donald Rickard exited the interstate in Memphis, eventually colliding with one of the cruisers and spinning out into another cruiser.174
“Now in danger of being cornered, [Donald] Rickard put his car into
reverse ‘in an attempt to escape.’”175 As he did so, two officers got out of
their cruisers and approached Donald Rickard’s car, which made contact
with yet another police cruiser.176 As Donald Rickard’s tires started spinning, and his car was rocking back and forth, Plumhoff fired three shots into
the car.177 Donald Rickard then reversed and maneuvered onto another
street, forcing one officer to step to his right to avoid the vehicle.178 “As
[Donald] Rickard continued ‘fleeing down’ that street, [two officers] fired
[twelve] shots toward [the] car, bringing the total number of shots fired during this incident to [fifteen.]”179 Donald “Rickard then lost control of the car
and crashed into a building.”180 He and Kelly Allen died from a “combination of gunshot wounds and injuries suffered in the crash that [ultimately]
ended the chase.”181
The estates of both Kelly Allen and Donald Rickard filed suit in the
United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, alleging
numerous state-law and constitutional claims.182 The defendant officers
moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, but the district
court denied the motion.183 The officers appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court
of Appeals, and a merits panel affirmed the district court’s decision, holding
that the defendant officers’ conduct violated Donald Rickard’s Fourth
172. Plumhoff, 134 S. Ct. at 2017.
173. Id.
174. Id.
175. Id.
176. Id.
177. Id.
178. Plumhoff, 134 S. Ct. at 2017.
179. Id. at 2018.
180. Id.
181. Id.
182. Estate of Allen v. City of W. Memphis, No. 05-2489, 2011 WL 197426, at *1 (W.D.
Tenn. Jan. 20, 2011), aff’d in part, 509 F. App’x 388 (6th Cir. 2012), rev’d and remanded
sub nom. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012 (2014) [hereinafter Summary Judgment Order].
183. Id. at *6–12. The trial court, relying on Lewis and Claybrook, held that Kelly Allen
was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at *11.
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Amendment rights.184 The Supreme Court granted the officers’ petition for
writ of certiorari on November 15, 2013.185
The Supreme Court in Plumhoff analogized its decision in Scott v. Harris,186 where the Court did not analyze whether the plaintiff was seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when the defendant officer used
his police vehicle to ram the plaintiff’s vehicle to terminate a high-speed
chase.187 Using the seizure definition from Brower, the Court in Harris
acknowledged the government had terminated the plaintiff’s freedom by
means intentionally applied when the officer applied his push bumper to the
rear of plaintiff’s vehicle, causing him to lose control of his vehicle and
crash.188
The Plumhoff decision, like Scott before it, did not discuss whether a
seizure occurred.189 But in determining that the officers did not use excessive force by firing at the fleeing vehicle fifteen times, the Court explained
that “the presence of Kelly Allen in the front seat of the car . . . [does not]
change[] the calculus.”190 At this juncture in the decision, Justice Alito highlighted the current circuit split over whether someone in Allen’s position
could recover under the Fourth Amendment, but expressed no view on the
matter.191
Thus, the question remaining after Plumhoff is whether a passenger in
Kelly Allen’s position can bring an excessive force claim under the Fourth
Amendment rather than the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court initially held that Kelly Allen was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment and analyzed her estate’s excessive force claim under the Fourteenth Amendment.192 After granting a motion to reconsider the estate’s
Fourth Amendment claim193 and following the Plumhoff decision, the district court again held that Allen’s Fourth Amendment claim “depends on
whether Rickard’s flight posed a grave public safety risk” and that her
Fourth Amendment rights were not violated.194 Because immunity from the
184. Id.
185. 134 S. Ct. 635 (2013).
186. 550 U.S. 372 (2007).
187. Id. at 381.
188. Id.
189. See Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2020–22 (2014).
190. Id. at 2022. The Court noted that “[o]ur cases make it clear that ‘Fourth Amendment
rights are personal rights which . . . may not be vicariously asserted.’” Id. (quoting Alderman
v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 174 (1969)).
191. Id. at 2022 n.4.
192. Summary Judgment Order, supra note 182, at *11–12.
193. Order Granting Motion for Reconsideration at 5–11, Estate of Allen v. City of W.
Memphis, No. 05-2489 (W.D. Tenn. July 23, 2013).
194. Order Granting Second Motion for Summary Judgment at 12–13, Estate of Allen v.
City of W. Memphis, No. 05-2489 (W.D. Tenn. March 24, 2015).
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remaining state-law claims was unavailable to the defendant officers, both
cases eventually settled out of court following Plumhoff.195
III. ARGUMENT
“Accidental seizures are . . . beyond the scope of a Fourth Amendment
that encompasses only those situations in which the government intends to
capture a specific individual in a precise manner.”196 The Supreme Court’s
multiple definitions of what constitutes a seizure and the Court’s rejection of
negligence as a basis for constitutional claims place “accidental seizures”
beyond the scope of the Fourth Amendment.197 Such claims must, therefore,
be analyzed under state law—constitutional, statutory, or tort—or the
framework of substantive due process.198 Yet courts—notably the Sixth Circuit and, to a certain extent, the Eleventh Circuit—permit Fourth Amendment claims by individuals who are not the intended target of police officers’ use of force.199 The majority of the federal circuit courts that requires
“accidental seizure” victims to bring their claims under the Fourteenth rather
than the Fourth Amendment evince a better reading of the Supreme Court’s
decisions concerning seizures.200
While declaring that the Fourth Amendment addresses the “misuse of
power” rather than the unintentional effects of otherwise constitutional government conduct,201 the Brower court held “that constraint of a person does
not reach constitutional significance if the police do not intend for the constraint to occur.”202 And although the Court in Graham established that “all
claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force—deadly or
not—in the course of a[] . . . ‘seizure’ . . . should be analyzed under the
Fourth Amendment,”203 the Supreme Court later clarified that Graham does
not require all constitutional claims relating to physically abusive police
conduct to be brought under the Fourth Amendment.204 Rather, unless police
195. E-mail from Michael A. Mosley, Arkansas Municipal League, to author (March 6,
2016, 04:31 CST) (on file with author). A decade after the incident, the plaintiffs collectively
settled for $17,500. Id.
196. Bacigal, The Right of the People, supra note 48, at 146.
197. See discussion infra Parts III.A–B.
198. See discussion infra Part III.C.
199. See discussion supra Part II.D.1.
200. See discussion infra Part III.A.
201. Brower v. Cnty. Of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596 (1989) (quoting Byars v. United States,
273 U.S. 28, 33 (1927)).
202. Bacigal, The Right of the People, supra note 48, at 155.
203. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395 (1989) (emphasis omitted).
204. United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 272 (1997). In light of Lanier, the majority
opinion in Graham could be read to support the proposition that no generic standard under
any amendment—e.g., the Fourth Amendment—governs all excessive force claims. Graham,
490 U.S. at 399–400 (Blackmun, J., concurring).
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conduct triggers the protections of the Fourth Amendment, an excessive
force claim should be analyzed under state law and substantive due process
principles.205 In other words, the unintentional application of physical force
by police does not satisfy the Brower definition of a seizure and does not
give rise to a Fourth Amendment claim.206 These limits and the definitions
of seizure provided by the Supreme Court reveal that claims like those
brought by Kelly Allen’s estate should be decided under state law and the
doctrine of substantive due process rather than the Fourth Amendment’s
“reasonableness” standard.
A.
Accidental Seizures Do Not Comport with the Supreme Court’s Definition of What Constitutes a Seizure
Excessive force claims brought by victims of accidental seizure fall
outside the scope of the Fourth Amendment as defined by the Supreme
Court. In Lewis and Brower, the Court foreclosed recovery under the Fourth
Amendment “for damages that innocent bystanders incur as a result of police pursuits.”207 Under Brower, negligent or accidental conduct by police
officers does not rise to the level of a constitutional violation; specifically, a
seizure must be willful to be actionable under the Fourth Amendment.208
Thus, a vehicle passenger is not seized by police gunfire unless there is a
governmental termination of the freedom of the passenger’s movement
through means intentionally applied to the passenger.209 Because the Supreme Court defined “seizure” in “situations in which the use of physical
force or the ‘show of authority’ was directed at a criminal suspect, most
courts have applied the Fourth Amendment only to the relationship between
the police officer and the suspect, not the officer and injured bystanders.”210
This position, adopted by the majority of federal circuit courts, requires
adoption of the Brower definition of seizure within the police chase context.
One argument against adopting the Brower “requirement that a seizure
be ‘intentional’ [is it] allows reckless shootings to evade review if one fo205. Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 843 (1998). The Fourth Amendment
“is not a general prohibition of all conduct that may be deemed unreasonable, unjustified or
outrageous.” Medeiros v. O’Connell, 150 F.3d 164, 167 (2d Cir. 1998).
206. See discussion infra Part III.A.
207. Bull, supra note 117, at 1030–31.
208. Baskin v. City of Houston, Mississippi, 378 F. App’x 417, 418 n.1 (5th Cir. 2010)
(explaining that “any attempt to allege excessive use of force in the course of a negligent
seizure is foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Brower”).
209. Brendlin is not to the contrary. The Court concluded that an unintended person “‘[may
be] the object of the detention’, so long as the detention is ‘willful’ and not merely the consequence
of ‘an unknowing act.’” Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 254 (2007) (alteration in original)
(citations omitted).
210. Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 367.
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cuses solely on the act of shooting and not the conduct preceding the shooting.”211 Indeed, Justice Stevens lamented in Hodari D. “that a police officer
may now fire his weapon at an innocent citizen and not implicate the Fourth
Amendment—as long as the officer misses his target.”212 But under Hodari
D., such a show of authority could amount to a seizure if it unambiguously
conveyed the message that the citizen was not free to leave.213 Furthermore,
brazen misconduct of police would implicate the Fourteenth Amendment’s
prohibition of acts undertaken “to terrorize, cause harm, or kill.”214
Another problem is that although the language in Brower regarding police intent eliminated accidental—i.e., unintended—seizures from the Fourth
Amendment’s ambit, “it did not establish the point at which an intended
seizure becomes an accomplished seizure.”215 However, “Hodari D. did for
attempted seizures what Brower had done for accidental seizures” by placing attempted seizures “beyond the coverage of the Fourth Amendment because a seizure occurs only when the government successfully controls the
citizen, either by [physical] restraint or by obtaining his submission to a
show of authority.”216
Finally, “[t]he Brower allusion to the accidental effects of otherwise
lawful conduct . . . avoids the fundamental question of whether the Fourth
Amendment encompasses a situation in which a police officer’s volitional
act[—]whether ultimately reasonable or unreasonable[—]results in an accidental intrusion upon the suspect’s freedom of movement.”217 One commentator questions whether the Brower court declined to extend the Fourth
Amendment to accidental seizures and expand section 1983 to encompass
mere negligence, thus avoiding further punishing the constable for wellintentioned blunders.218 This is the position taken by the majority of circuit
courts, and reflects the Brower majority’s rejection of accidental seizures.219
The minority of circuits that permits Fourth Amendment recovery for
unintentional victims of police seizure rely on a more expansive concept of
intent to apply physical force.220 The Supreme Court seems to have left room
for such interpretation in Harris, noting that the defendant officer’s decision
to terminate a high-speed chase by ramming the fleeing suspect’s vehicle
211. Id. at 380 (alteration in original).
212. California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 630 (1991) (Stevens, J., dissenting).
213. Id. at 628.
214. Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 855 (1998).
215. Bacigal, A Unified Theory, supra note 45, at 921.
216. Id. at 922.
217. Bacigal, In Pursuit, supra note 35, at 92.
218. Id. at 95.
219. Id. at 96.
220. See Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 369 (“Some courts require an
objective intent to stop a particular individual, and others require an objective intent to use
means which results in a stop, whether of a known or unknown person.”).
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amounted to a seizure.221 A dictum in Brendlin also appears to support the
proposition that means may be intentionally applied to more than one target.222 However, permitting accidental shooting victims to bring Fourth
Amendment claims ignores the line—drawn in Brower and traced in
Brendlin—between “willful” detentions and the consequences of unknowing
acts.223 Although several circuits have analyzed only whether Brendlin gives
passengers standing to challenge automobile searches,224 the Eleventh Circuit expressly declined to extend the holding of Brendlin to cases involving
the use of deadly force that accidentally injures hostages or innocent bystanders.225 Doing so would go beyond the Fourth Amendment’s limits on
seizure powers, which were intended to prevent government actors from
arbitrarily and oppressively interfering with the privacy and personal security of individuals.226 The Court recognized this very point in Brendlin, rejecting the idea that all motorists who move to the side of the road as police pull
over another vehicle are seized.227
Moreover, the minority position that permits “accidental seizures” is at
odds with Brower, which imposes a minimal but purely subjective requirement to trigger Fourth Amendment coverage: “the acquisition of control
over a suspect is a ‘seizure’ only if the officer intended to accomplish [the
seizure] by the means actually used to do so.”228 At least one circuit court of
appeals has also viewed Brendlin in this light.229 Accordingly, accidental
shooting victims who are unintentionally struck by police gunfire do not fall
within the Brower definition of when the application of physical force
amounts to a Fourth Amendment seizure.
221. Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 381 (2007).
222. Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 261 (2007) (explaining that if the car in Brower “had had another occupant, it would have made sense to hold that he too had been seized
when the car collided with the roadblock”).
223. Id. at 254 (quoting Brower v. Cnty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596 (1989)).
224. See, e.g., United States v. Valdez, 540 F. App’x 363, 364 (5th Cir. 2013) (per curiam); United States v. Guzman, 454 F. App’x 531, 534 (8th Cir. 2012); United States v. Symonevich, 688 F.3d 12, 19 (1st Cir. 2012).
225. Cooper v. Rutherford, 503 F. App’x 672, 675 (11th Cir. 2012). At least one federal
district court has followed suit. Rosenbloom v. Morgan, No. 313-CV-160-RS-CJK, 2015 WL
300428, at *6 (N.D. Fla. Jan. 22, 2015) (discussing Brendlin and explaining a “plaintiff must
be the intended object of the act of restraint”).
226. United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 554 (1976); Brendlin, 551 U.S. at 263.
227. Brendlin, 551 U.S. at 262.
228. Dix, supra note 131, at 378.
229. Gardner v. Bd. of Police Comm’rs, for Kansas City, Mo., 641 F.3d 947, 952–53 (8th
Cir. 2011).
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Negligence Does Not Give Rise to a Fourth Amendment Claim
When “accidental seizures” amount to negligence, resulting claims are
traditionally governed by state law and insufficient to trigger Fourth
Amendment protection.230 Although the Supreme Court has recognized that
the Constitution does not supplant traditional tort law,231 the Court has left
open the possibility that some constitutional provisions may be violated by
negligent conduct.232 But while the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness
standard has been compared to a negligence regime,233 the “exclusion of
negligence from the Constitution seems unequivocal and broad.”234 Accordingly, decisions across several circuits support the proposition that police
negligence does not give rise to a Fourth Amendment excessive force
claim.235 And, relevant to excessive force claims brought by unintended vic230. See supra notes 228–229 and accompanying text; infra notes 231–234 and accompanying text.
231. Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 332 (1986) (“Our Constitution deals with the large
concerns of the governors and the governed, but it does not purport to supplant traditional tort law
in laying down rules of conduct to regulate liability for injuries that attend living together in society.”).
232. Id. (“[W]e need not rule out the possibility that there are other constitutional provisions that would be violated by mere lack of care.”); Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 547–48
(1981) (Powell, J., concurring) (“The intent question cannot be given ‘a uniform answer
across the entire spectrum of conceivable constitutional violations which might be the subject
of a § 1983 action.’”), overruled by Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327 (1986).
233. L. Rush Atkinson, The Bilateral Fourth Amendment and the Duties of Law-Abiding
Persons, 99 GEO. L.J. 1517, 1534 (2011) (arguing that negligence is “the effective rule embodied
by the Reasonableness Clause of the Fourth Amendment”). But see Anne Bowen Poulin, The
Fourth Amendment: Elusive Standards: Elusive Review, 67 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 127, 132 (1991)
(“[E]ven though the [F]ourth [A]mendment speaks of unreasonable searches and seizures, it does
not leave the courts to define what is unreasonable with the latitude of a jury in a negligence action.”).
234. Conner v. Rodriguez, 891 F. Supp. 2d 1228, 1234 (D.N.M. 2011).
235. See McCoy v. City of Monticello, 342 F.3d 842, 846–50 (8th Cir. 2003) (finding
plaintiff seized when he submitted to officer’s show of authority and applying Fourth
Amendment reasonableness standard only to officer’s intentional action of drawing weapon
before officer slipped on ice, accidentally shooting the plaintiff); Evans v. Hightower, 117
F.3d 1318, 1321 (11th Cir. 1997) (finding no evidence that defendants intended their vehicle
to strike plaintiff); Sturges v. Matthews, 53 F.3d 659, 662 (4th Cir. 1995) (approving jury
instruction on excessive force that no violation occurred upon a finding that plaintiff’s injuries resulted “from an accident or from an unknowing act”); Ansley v. Heinrich, 925 F.2d
1339 (11th Cir. 1991); Campbell v. White, 916 F.2d 421, 423 (7th Cir. 1990) (holding that
accident during police chase was not “means intentionally applied”); Pleasant v. Zamieski,
895 F.2d 272, 276–77 (6th Cir. 1990) (applying Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard
only to officer’s intentional acts of officer unholstering and not reholstering his weapon before accidental shooting); Dodd v. City of Norwich, 827 F.2d 1, 7–8 (2nd Cir. 1987) (rejecting plaintiff’s claims based on simple negligence because the Fourth Amendment “only protects individuals against ‘unreasonable’ seizures, not seizures conducted in a ‘negligent’
manner”); Young v. City of Killeen, 775 F.2d 1349, 1353 (5th Cir. 1985) (“The constitutional
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tims, the Supreme Court in Brower “significantly narrowed the scope of the
Fourth Amendment” by equating seizures with “intentional” conduct,236
placing police negligence outside the amendment’s purview.237
Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s applications of the exclusionary rule
and qualified immunity238 reveal a fundamental tolerance for governmental
intrusions on liberty that fall short of deliberate misconduct,239 and a common theme throughout many use-of-force cases is deference to an officer’s
judgment.240 Although negligence once came within the Supreme Court’s
formulation of the exclusionary rule,241 the Court in Herring v. United States
concluded that negligence by police was insufficient to trigger the protections of the exclusionary rule, because “any marginal deterrence [of constitutional violations] does not ‘pay its way.’”242 At its very core, the Fourth
right to be free from unreasonable seizure has never been equated by the Court with the right
to be free from a negligently executed stop or arrest.”).
236. See Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 374.
237. Bacigal, The Right of the People, supra note 48, at 171–72.
238. See Messerschmidt v. Millender, 132 S. Ct. 1235, 1244 n.1 (2012) (citing United
States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922–923 (1984)) (explaining that the Court has held “‘the same
standard of objective reasonableness that we applied in the context of a suppression hearing
in Leon defines the qualified immunity accorded an officer’ who obtained or relied on an
allegedly invalid warrant”); Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 344 (1986); Jennifer E. Laurin,
Trawling for Herring: Lessons in Doctrinal Borrowing and Convergence, 111 COLUM. L.
REV. 670, 672 (2011) (citing Herring v. United States, 129 S. Ct. 695 (2009)) (arguing the
contours of the exclusionary rule announced in Herring “were not drawn primarily from
exclusionary rule jurisprudence, but rather from the arena of constitutional tort law—
specifically, from the good faith defense, or qualified immunity”); H. Richard Uviller, Seizure by Gunshot: The Riddle of the Fleeing Felon, 14 N.Y.U. REV. L. & SOC. CHANGE 705,
708–15 (1986) (examining Garner and “its impact on the exclusionary rule in criminal prosecutions”).
239. See Davis v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2419, 2427–28 (2011) (“But when the police act
with an objectively reasonable good-faith belief that their conduct is lawful, or when their conduct involves only simple, isolated negligence, the deterrence rationale loses much of its force,
and exclusion cannot pay its way.”) (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted));
Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 171 (1978) (explaining that “[a]llegations of negligence or
innocent mistake are insufficient” to mandate an evidentiary hearing to challenge the veracity of
affidavits supporting warrants); Thomas K. Clancy, The Irrelevancy of the Fourth Amendment
in the Roberts Court, 85 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 191, 207 (2010) (“‘Mere negligence’ would make
many—if not most—Fourth Amendment violations inappropriate candidates for suppression.”).
240. Aaron Kimber, Note, Righteous Shooting, Unreasonable Seizure? The Relevance of
an Officer’s Pre-Seizure Conduct in an Excessive Force Claim, 13 WM. & MARY BILL RTS. J.
651, 658 (2004).
241. United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 919 (1984) (“The deterrent purpose of the
exclusionary rule necessarily assumes that the police have engaged in willful, or at the very
least negligent, conduct which has deprived the defendant of some right.”).
242. Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 143–48 (2009) (citation omitted) (noting that
“the abuses that gave rise to the exclusionary rule featured intentional conduct that was patently unconstitutional.”). At least one state supreme court has rejected Herring on state law
grounds. See Commonwealth v. Johnson, 86 A.3d 182, 192–199 (Pa. 2014).
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Amendment and its reasonableness standard “embody allowance for the fact
that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in
circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the
amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”243 High-speed
interstate chases and encounters with apparently dangerous suspects on city
streets are not exceptions. In light of the wide latitude afforded to police and
the express pronouncement in Brower that the Fourth Amendment addresses
the misuse of governmental power and not the inadvertent effects of otherwise lawful government conduct,244 the Fourteenth Amendment becomes the
final resort for accidental shootings victims to adjudicate their federal constitutional rights.
Finally, states have considerable autonomy in fashioning their own
remedies for the use of deadly force by police officers.245 Although federal
plaintiffs have had some success litigating use-of-force claims on negligence
grounds, judicial resistance to constitutional claims premised on negligence
“runs high.”246 The Supreme Court has recognized that states, through their
courts and legislatures, may expand the duties of care and protection owed
by the state’s agents, “[b]ut not ‘all common-law duties owed by government actors were . . . constitutionalized by the Fourteenth Amendment.’”247
In the same vein, the Court has repeatedly explained that the protections of
the Constitution are not coterminous with those provided by state law.248 As
243. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396–97 (1989).
244. Brower v. Cnty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596 (1989) (quoting Byars v. United States,
273 U.S. 28, 33 (1927)).
245. Roger K. Picker, Police Liability in High-Speed Chases: Federal Constitution or
State Tort Law; Why the Supreme Court’s New Standard Leaves the Burden on the State and
What This Might Mean for Maryland, 29 U. BALT. L. REV. 139, 141 (1999). Moreover, misconduct may subject police officers to criminal liability. See generally John V. Jacobi, Prosecuting Police Misconduct, 2000 WIS. L. REV. 789, 802–15 (2000) (discussing prosecutions
for police misconduct at the state and federal levels and proposing a more stringent federal
criminal civil rights statute). Following the events giving rise to Plumhoff, no criminal charges were filed in connection with Donald Rickard’s death; however, the State of Tennessee
prosecuted three officers for the death of Kelly Allen. Jay Shapiro, High Speed Police Pursuit
and The Fourth Amendment, LEXISNEXIS EMERGING ISSUES 7265, November 4, 2014, at 1–2.
The charges were ultimately resolved through pretrial diversion. Id. at 2.
246. Michael Avery, Police Chases: More Deadly Than a Speeding Bullet?, TRIAL, December 1997, at 53.
247. DeShaney v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 202 (1989); see
also THOMAS K. CLANCY, THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: ITS HISTORY AND INTERPRETATION §
6.3.4.1 (2d ed. 2014) (discussing the relationship between state law and the Supreme Court’s
Fourth Amendment analysis).
248. See Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847 n.8 (1998) (explaining the “need
to preserve the constitutional proportions of constitutional claims, lest the Constitution be demoted to what we have called a font of tort law”); Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 332
(1986); Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 146 (1979) (“Section 1983 imposes liability for vio-
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Judge Friendly famously explained in Johnson v. Glick,249 “[n]ot every push
or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge’s
chambers,” violates the Constitution.250 Since Glick, some courts adhere to
the view that it is “not the function of a federal court to force state tort law
into unfamiliar contours under the guise of constitutional interpretation.”251
Increasingly, state supreme courts have recognized more expansive
protections of individual rights under state constitutions than the protections
arising from federal courts’ interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.252 Almost fifty years ago, an early commentator on state constitutional law recognized that “there are large gaps in . . . federally protected rights which will
have to be filled by the states.”253 Justice Brennan echoed this sentiment
eight years later, writing that “[s]tate constitutions . . . are a font of individual liberties, their protections often extending beyond those required by the
Supreme Court’s interpretation of federal law.”254 The benefits are many
when constitutional protections arise at the state level: avoiding the restraints of federalism; the ability of the states to experiment in the area of
individual rights; and the more efficient implementation of rights originating
locally, as opposed to enforcing “those which emanate from Washington.”255
Several states have rejected on independent state constitutional grounds the
Supreme Court’s definition of a seizure.256 Thus, accidental shootings may
give rise to claims under state constitutional law or another federal constitutional provision, specifically the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
lations of rights protected by the Constitution, not for violations of duties of care arising out of
tort law.”).
249. 481 F.2d 1028 (2d Cir. 1973).
250. Id. at 1033. Glick has arguably “been the most influential decision perpetuating the
‘shocks-the-conscience’ test for excessive force claims under [section] 1983.” Lewis M.
Wasserman, Students’ Freedom from Excessive Force by Public School Officials: A Fourth
or Fourteenth Amendment Right?, 21 KAN. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 35, 55 (2011).
251. Evans v. Avery, 100 F.3d 1033, 1041, n. 9 (1st Cir. 1996).
252. See, e.g., Griffin v. State, 347 Ark. 788, 792, 67 S.W.3d 582, 584 (2002) (citing
Arkansas v. Sullivan, 532 U.S. 769 (2001)) (“[W]e do have the authority to impose greater
restrictions on police activities in our state based upon our own state law than those the Supreme Court holds to be necessary based upon federal constitutional standards.”); see also
CLANCY, supra note 246, § 1.4 (“State courts have increasingly turned to analysis of their
own search and seizure provisions to afford broader protections to individuals than the Fourth
Amendment offers.”).
253. Robert Force, State “Bills of Rights”: A Case of Neglect and the Need for a Renaissance, 3 VAL. U. L. REV. 125, 164 (1969).
254. William J. Brennan, Jr., State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights,
90 HARV. L. REV. 489, 491 (1977).
255. Force, supra note 253, at 163–64.
256. CLANCY, supra note 247, § 5.1.4.2.5 (compiling cases and noting that “Hodari D.
may be the single most important event persuading state courts to depart from Supreme Court
opinions in construing their own constitutions”).
2016]
C.
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521
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment Prohibits Egregious Police Misconduct
When police activity does not implicate the Fourth Amendment, the
Fourteenth Amendment becomes the most textually obvious source of constitutional protection from abusive government conduct.257 The Supreme
Court so held in Lewis.258 Furthermore, the Court has historically reserved
the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process for claims that involve police misconduct.259 The Court has also consistently held that the
constitutional guarantee of substantive due process prohibits governmental
officials from violating citizens’ civil liberties,260 and the Fourteenth
Amendment reemerged as a basis for excessive force claims following
Brower.261 Thus, when a specific constitutional provision, such as the Fourth
Amendment, does not cover a particular claim, courts should analyze alleged constitutional violations that arise from the use of force under the rubric of substantive due process provided by the Fourteenth Amendment.262
The shocks-the-conscience test announced in Lewis exists mainly to
preserve the Fourteenth Amendment for grievous and blatant abuses of governmental authority.263 The Court in Plumhoff noted that the Fourteenth
Amendment protects “accidental seizure” victims when a police officer has
“a purpose to cause harm unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest.”264 The
Court has delineated the use of “unreasonable force” under the Fourth
Amendment and a deprivation of life and liberty “without due process of
law;”265 the Court has also expressly rejected attempts to shoehorn claims
into express constitutional provisions rather than the general protections of
the Due Process Clause.266 A close reading of Graham reveals that, although
no generic standard applies to all claims of excessive force, the Fourteenth
Amendment is available as a constitutional basis for accidental police shoot257. U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1 (“[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .”).
258. Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 843–44 (1998).
259. See supra notes 94–97 and accompanying text.
260. See Urbonya, “Accidental” Shootings, supra note 3, at 375 (compiling cases).
261. Id. at 374.
262. United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 272 n.7 (1997). See also Hudson v. Palmer, 468
U.S. 517, 539 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring); cf. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395 (1989)
(stating that the reasonableness standard under the Fourth Amendment should be used for excessive force cases rather than the substantive due process standard).
263. Roger K. Picker, Police Liability in High-Speed Chases: Federal Constitution or
State Tort Law; Why the Supreme Court’s New Standard Leaves the Burden on the State and
What This Might Mean for Maryland, 29 U. BALT. L. REV. 139, 165–66 (1999).
264. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2022 n.4 (2014).
265. City of Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 817 n.4 (1985).
266. Soldal v. Cook Cnty., Ill., 506 U.S. 56, 70–71 (1992).
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ing victims who are not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.267
Therefore, when the use of force does not trigger the protections of the
Fourth Amendment, excessive force claims are properly analyzed under the
Fourteenth Amendment.268 The latter amendment provides an avenue for
plaintiffs like the estate of Kelly Allen to bring a constitutional claim against
the West Memphis police officers.269 A separate question arising in such a
case would be whether a passenger’s Fourteenth Amendment claim would
rise or fall with the driver’s Fourth Amendment claim.270
D.
Kelly Allen’s Claim Under the Fourth Amendment
If presented with whether Kelly Allen’s estate could sustain an excessive force claim under the Fourth Amendment, the controlling Supreme
Court precedent establishes that the estate cannot sustain such a claim. The
estate’s claim would have been unique in the sense that it is not clear whether Kelly was a suspect, hostage, or simply an innocent bystander.271 Further
complicating the analysis is the fact that Kelly Allen was struck by a bullet
fragment.272
267. Graham, 490 U.S. at 393–95.
268. United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 272 n.7 (1997).
269. The district court, initially finding that Kelly Allen was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, analyzed her excessive force claim under the Fourteenth
Amendment and found no constitutional violation. See Summary Judgment Order, supra note
182, at 28–33.
270. It is unclear if a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of a criminal suspect—e.g.,
the driver of a car leading police on a high-speed chase—would amount to a violation of a bystander’s Fourteenth Amendment rights when the same application of force affects both parties,
although it is arguable that an unconstitutional use of deadly force is a purpose to cause harm
unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest, especially if the bystander is not subject to arrest.
Although Fourth Amendment rights “may not be vicariously asserted,” Alderman v. United
States, 394 U.S. 165, 174 (1969), a case involving a Fourth Amendment claim asserted by
one party and a Fourteenth Amendment claim asserted another party may fall outside the
holding of Alderman and within the Rochin-Lewis line of cases. Additionally, the Supreme
Court rejected a blanket authorization of using deadly force to apprehend all fleeing suspects,
explaining that deadly force “is a self-defeating way of apprehending a suspect” that is not
“so vital as to outweigh the suspect’s interest in his own life.” Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S.
1, 10–11 (1985).
271. The Supreme Court rejected Donald Rickard’s estates argument that the presence of
Kelly Allen in the front seat of the car rendered the number of shots fired by the officers
unreasonable. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2022 (2014).
272. Brief for Petitioners at 3, Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012 (2014) (No. 121117), 2013 WL 6907719, at *3.
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Although she interacted with the officer during the initial traffic stop in
West Memphis, Kelly Allen was not necessarily a criminal suspect.273 Nor is
it clear that Donald Rickard took his companion as a hostage, although he
exposed her to the dangers of a police chase and arguably left her no chance
to seek safety as he sped along Interstate 40.274 Kelly Allen may be best
characterized as an unsuspecting bystander who found herself an unwilling
participant in a rapidly evolving and eventually fatal high-speed pursuit.
This determination may or may not come to bear on the analysis of an “accidental seizure” following Plumhoff.275
However, the bullet fragment that accidentally struck Kelly Allen is far
different from the roadblock in Brower, which the Court explained was not
only a significant show of authority to induce a voluntary stop, but also a
mechanism designed to produce a stop by physical impact if voluntary compliance did not occur.276 A bullet fired from a police officer’s gun becomes a
seizure when it hits its intended target or induces the target to submit to the
officer’s show of authority.277 Here, neither occurred, but a closer call arises
under Brendlin.
An aside in Brendlin reflects the Supreme Court’s sentiment that the
definition of a seizure announced in Brower would have applied to a passenger in the vehicle that collided with the police roadblock.278 This reasoning supports the Brendlin holding that all occupants of a vehicle are seized
when the vehicle submits to a police officer’s show of authority (e.g., flashing blue lights), thereby bringing the vehicle and its occupants within the
officer’s physical control.279 But police encounters that end in gunfire fall
273. The officer suspected Donald Rickard, the driver of the vehicle, had been drinking
beer and involved in an accident. Plumhoff, 134 S. Ct. at 2017 n.1.
274. Id. at 2022 (“After all, it was Rickard who put Allen in danger by fleeing and refusing to end the chase, and it would be perverse if his disregard for Allen’s safety worked to his
benefit.”). During oral arguments, Justice Kennedy noted that the presence of “a passenger
who apparently was not involved in any illegal activity . . . makes the police reaction more
dangerous.” Transcript of Oral Argument at 13–14, Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012
(2014) (No. 12-1117), 2014 U.S. Trans. LEXIS 36, at *11.
275. The Supreme Court noted that the “risk to Allen would be of central concern” in the
case brought by Kelly Allen’s estate; however, it is unclear if Rickard’s acts would “change
the calculus” of the court’s analysis of her estate’s claim, Plumhoff, 134 S. Ct. at 2022, especially if it was brought under the Fourteenth Amendment.
276. Brower v. Cnty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 598 (1989).
277. Bella v. Chamberlain, 24 F.3d 1251, 1255 (10th Cir. 1994) (“Hodari suggests that
when law enforcement officers shoot at a fleeing suspect, a ‘seizure’ occurs only if the shot
strikes the fleeing person or if the shot causes the fleeing person to submit to this show of authority.”); Cole v. Bone, 993 F.2d 1328, 1333 (8th Cir. 1993) (holding shots fired at fleeing
truck “constituted assertions of authority by the officers, but they were not seizures under the
Fourth Amendment because Cole did not submit to any of them, nor did any succeed in stopping him”).
278. Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 261 (2007).
279. Id. at 255–56.
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outside Brendlin and its adoption of the Mendenhall test—which is, ultimately, an extension of the analysis announced in Hodari D.—for when an
individual can only passively submit to a show of governmental authority.280
Gunfire aimed at a particular suspect that strikes a third party is governed by
Brower and does not amount to a seizure for lack of intent to terminate the
third party’s freedom.281 Even if Brendlin were to apply, no seizure of Kelly
Allen occurred because the officers did not show unambiguous intent to
seize Kelly Allen and Donald Rickard continued to flee after the officers
began firing; thus, there was no submission to the officers’ show of authority as required by Hodari D. and Brendlin.282 Furthermore, Brendlin must be
read alongside Hodari D., which established that the Mendenhall test alone
is an insufficient condition for a seizure.283
Therefore, the Supreme Court’s existing precedent provides that Kelly
Allen was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and its
reasonableness analysis is not available for victims who bring Fourth
Amendment claims for unintentional applications of deadly force.
IV. CONCLUSION
The Supreme Court’s decisions on the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable seizures—and police officers’ use of excessive force—
form a complicated doctrinal web.284 It is anything but surprising that the
federal circuit courts of appeals differ on who may address their grievances
under the Fourth Amendment.285 As it stands today, the Supreme Court’s
rulings in this muddy area of constitutional law reveal that citizens who are
the unintended victims of lethal police force are entitled to a substantive due
process claim under the Fourteenth Amendment and not a cause of action
under the Fourth Amendment.286 Claims brought by accidental shooting victims do not fall within the Supreme Court’s prevailing seizure definition,
nor does the Fourth Amendment govern negligent police conduct.287 It is
axiomatic that not all “intercourse between policemen and citizens involves
‘seizures’ of persons,”288 and substantive due process as defined in Lewis
provides the federal constitutional framework available for claims brought
280. United States v. Allison, 398 F. App’x 862, 864 (4th Cir. 2010) (“The holding in
Brendlin—that a traffic stop seizes a passenger as well as the driver—rests on the physical
confinement of the automobile.”).
281. See Wyman, supra note 64, at 1488.
282. Bacigal, A Unified Theory, supra note 45, at 921–22.
283. California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 628 (1991).
284. See discussion supra Parts II.A–C.
285. See discussion supra Part II.D.
286. See supra notes 198–259 and accompanying text.
287. See supra notes 204–246 and accompanying text.
288. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19, n.16 (1968).
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by individuals who are accidentally shot by police. Protection also may arise
at the state level. When a vehicle passenger like Kelly Allen is struck by
police gunfire and files suit against the officers, such claims must be governed by substantive due process and state law.
Adam D. Franks*
*
J.D., 2016, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law;
B.S.B.A., 2008, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. I am inexplicably grateful to Professor Michael Mosley and Professor Terrence Cain for their guidance, the constituents of the
law review for their acumen, and my family and friends for their enduring encouragement
and support.